Explanatory Notes to the Korean Artist Digital Archive Project: Lee Kang So

1.  These Explanatory Notes relate to the Lee Kang So Digital Archive containing information about the artist and his body of work, collected as of June 10, 2019 under the Korean Artist Digital Archive Project.

2.  The Lee Kang So Digital Archive project was intended to identify all extant or known artworks of the artist and thoroughly document his career by researching source material and basic information about his life and art. An exhaustive set of source adocuments was reviewed, including exhibition catalogues featuring his work and books and articles discussing his art. As is the case with most currently active artists, the existing literature and source material on Lee and his work are widely varied in type and content. They range from catalogues to journals, theses and dissertations, and books. In addition, there are exhibition reviews, critical essays, interviews or magazine articles. These various source documents were comprehensively examined to gain a broad insight into his life and career and build a knowledge base, which would not only help improve the understanding of his art, but also assist in efforts to promote worldwide the activities of Korean artists in general.

(1)   The Lee Kang So Digital Archive project was carried out over an eight-month period. The project consisted of two parts, with the first part taking place between September 2018 and January 2019 and the second between January and late May 2019. The results were then organized and categorized, with additional research conducted where necessary, a phase which lasted until late July. During the first part of the project, 969 of his artworks were identified, and during the second part of the project, an additional

256 artworks, which raised the total to 1,225. In addition to the artworks featured in exhibition  catalogues, 848 images of other works were collected, including images of works that were sold at auctions (78 sold at K Auction, 112 sold at Seoul Auction), 10 public artworks, 591 digital copies of slides from the artist’s personal archive, 51 other images provided by the artist, 3 provided by the Victoria and Albert Museum and 3 images of items in private collections. Moreover, 292 biographical source materials and 1,915 documents about or otherwise related to the artist were identified. Efforts were also made to visit holding institutions and private collectors to view the artist’s work in person as much as possible.

(2)   The effort to investigate the artist’s body of work was greatly helped by clear and detailed images provided by Seoul Auction and K Auction of items traded through their auction services. The archives of the MMCA Art Research Center and the material from the Kimdaljin Art Archives and Museum were also tremendously helpful.

3.  Artwork images were linked to the various excel files, with each image assigned a unique file name.

Listed artworks are provided with basic information (title, date, medium [materials and techniques], dimensions, current location, genre, serial number) as well as details such as title history, other attributed dates, ownership history, exhibition history, references, quotations, reference images and research notes.

4.    Lee’s body of work encompasses a number of genres, from painting to printing, photography, documentary photography, performance, sculpture, installation, videography and drawing. Each genre was assigned a two-letter abbreviation as shown below:

Painting                 PA

Print                        PR

Photo                     PO

Documentary Photo            DP

Performance                         PE

Sculpture                               SC

Installation                           IN

Video                     VD (Videos filmed by the artist himself)

Drawing                 DR

Each listed artwork is accompanied by a work image and is assigned a number. Work numbers contain genre abbreviations and are chronologically ordered in most cases. There are various combinations of letters and numbers, which reflect both the date of creation and the date of exhibition and uniquely identify each entry within a specific excel file.

(1)  Some of the paintings are grouped in combinations consisting of two or more works. Combined paintings are often visually similar to one another in their general appearance. If they, however, are varied in some way, they were treated as different works.

(2)   Prints: Since printing is an art form that produces several copies of the same image, it is important to establish the various editions of a print. A distinction was made between AP (Artist’s Proof), a print outside the regular edition retained by the artist, and the regular edition. Some of his prints appear to be almost identical to one another except for certain details. Although the canvas impressions are of the same image, the artist adds small dots to some of them or retouches them using dabs of paint or otherwise to create different details conveying a specific artistic intent. Even if similar in overall appearance, prints that vary in details, however small, were classified as different works in recognition of the difference in the artist’s intent as well as the final outcome.

(3)   Photos: These are photos taken by the artist himself, which, furthermore, were intended as artworks. Lee Kang So took photos of his rural hometown and the landscapes and buildings of places he traveled to, such as Tibet and China, which were later published as photography books and exhibited.

(4)   Documentary photos: These photos document performances by Lee Kang So. Philip Auslander once noted: “the act of documenting an event as a performance is what constitutes it as such” (Philip Auslander, “The Performativity of Performance Documentation,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep. 2006), p.5. In this project, photos documenting performances were considered independent artworks whose creator’s copyright is recognized.

(5)   Performances: Lee Kang So has been continuously showing his performance and installation works from the 1970’s by re-performing and re-exhibiting them. A case in point is his performance work titled Bar in the Gallery. Although its re-performances no longer feature the same furniture as in the original performance in the 1970’s and the audience participating in the performance is no longer the same, they retain the essential concept of the 1970’s performance, of bringing a real-life venue into a white cube-like gallery environment. The artist calls this work “Disappearance” in reference to the immediacy and evanescence of performance. On this subject, Peggy Phelan famously said: “Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance. To the degree that performance attempts to enter the economy of reproduction it betrays and lessens the promise of its own ontology” (Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, New York, Routledge, 1993, p. 143). Recording is inseparably connected with the possibility of re-performance. A performance exists through its records, which in turn make a re-performance possible. If there is one thing that is tirelessly affirmed in Lee Kang So’s performances, it is the theme of “disappearance,” in other words, the transience of performance itself. If performance art is about unique situations that cannot be reproduced, his performances exist within history through re-performances. Re-performances need not raise the question of originality just because performance art is tied to a specific time and specific place. Notwithstanding, a continuous series of performances on the same themes were treated as ongoing processes or works in progress. For instance, the various presentations of Bar in the Gallery, from the original performance to the 2019 performance in Singapore, are listed together in a separate excel file, classifying them as different versions of the same work.

(6)   Sculptures: Lee Kang So has made a number of stone works which squarely fall into the category of sculpture, as well as several ceramic works. Some of his ceramic works are currently in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. However, classifying his art by the material used, such as

stone or ceramic, leads to confusion. For example, the Korean word ‘dojagi’ (pottery) into which the English word ‘ceramic’ is often translated only causes misunderstanding about his art. By broadly defining spatial art—or three-dimensional art—to include ceramic art, the artist’s ceramic works were able to be placed in a classification with sculptures rather than craft works, as they are sculptural in their emphasis on form and energy, rather than objects intended for a practical use.

(7)   Installations: Installations are distinguished from sculptures insofar as they are, unlike the latter that are usually self-contained, composed of several elements displayed across a space. Lee sometimes uses the same elements in several installations by arranging them in a different order or changing the directions they face. In this project, installations consisting of the same elements were classified as the same works by treating the variations in the display arrangement as ‘variable dimensions.’ All installations are provided with information about the exhibition venue to allow the easy identification within a single excel file of the various different display methods used for the same work.

(8)   Videos: As an experimental and avant-garde artist who pushes the boundaries of art, Lee also has a body of video works to his name. Video works filmed and produced by the artist, which have been recently identified in the Park Hyunki archive, are grouped under a separate category.

(9)    Drawings: John Ruskin once wrote that drawing is not the art of representing a natural object faithfully but the art of expressing the emotions experienced from it (John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing, translated into Korean by Jeon Yong-hi, Seoul: Objet, 2011). In other words, according to Ruskin, drawing is not about capturing external characteristics of an object but extracting its inner soul. Drawing is an essential element of Lee Kang So’s paintings, characterized by the spiritual dimensions of the subject matter they expose and compelling brushstrokes that show painting as a process. Notwithstanding, for the purpose of genre classification, in order to distinguish them from paintings, only simple conceptual sketches and studies in preparation of a finished painting and drawings that the artist himself treated as ‘drawings’ were placed in this category.

5.   Titles: In most cases, the titles used in this Digital Archive are those listed in exhibition catalogues. However, in some instances, the same artworks are designated by different titles in different exhibition catalogues. In such cases, assuming that these titles were approved by Lee, as is the customary practice with the work of a living artist, they were verified through appropriate procedures. No further verification was undertaken when the discrepancy is clearly due to a simple mistake such as a typo or the misreading of a handwritten title on a slide. For greater consistency in the use of titles, the following two rules were followed:

(1)   Verified titles of artworks that were shown in an art fair or an exhibition are used exactly as they appear in the catalogue. The same goes for titles in English. Any inaccuracies in titles listed in catalogues are indicated in research notes.

(2)  For an overview of how the title of a work changed over time, a title history is provided along with the sources of different titles.

6.   Periodization: Lee’s body of work was divided into three large periods, namely, the 1960’s-1970’s, 1980’s -1990’s and the 2000’s. Lee’s career spans across various different genres. Moreover, his installation piece, Bar in the Gallery, has been re-exhibited several times since his first solo show at the Myeongdong Gallery. The artist has also long produced sculptures using pottery clay, which add to his body of three dimensional works. Since Lee’s art is born out of the fundamental question, “What is modern art?” and is continuously informed by it, formal genres such as photography, three dimensional art or painting cannot be considered to have their own discrete semantic network, separate from others. His art was therefore divided according to how his career unfolded, into the 1960’s-1970’s, a period largely dominated by experimental works, 1980’s-1990’s, a period marked by the preponderance of paintings, and the 2000’s during which he started to work with a wider range of media while exhibiting abroad at an increasing frequency.

(1) In the 1960’s to the 1970’s, Lee actively experimented with new media, from abstract art to printing, nude performances and photography. As a key member of the group of artists who created and curated the Daegu Contemporary Art Festival, Lee was one of the early pioneers of Korean experimental art. Following his participation in the Paris Biennale of 1975, questions about the meaning of contemporary art and its place started to loom large in his work, taking on a more urgent tone.

(2)   The two decades between the 1980’s and the 1990’s were a period which witnessed the emergence of greater diversity within the art of Lee Kang So, thus far known mainly as a key figure of Korean experimental art. He set out to work across a broader range of genres, from three dimensional art like sculpture to various two dimensional works like painting, drawing, photography and printing. This was also the period during which Lee started to exhibit internationally, in places like the US, the UK and France.

(3)    Since the early 2000’s, commensurately with his growing stature now as a senior member of the Korean art scene, there has been an active reassessment of Lee’s art. He has also been exhibiting in increasingly diverse locations around the world. Of note here is the fact that his solo exhibitions in this period combine new works, retrospectives and re-performances. As the 2000’s dawned with a surge of

interest in physical art, Lee re-performed a large number of his performance pieces from the 1970’s.

(4)   Artworks whose date of creation is unknown or uncertain were included in one of the three periods considered the most appropriate, based on stylistic characteristics.

7.   Dimensions: The Dimensions of two dimensional items are expressed as length (cm) by width (cm), and the dimensions of three dimensional items are expressed as length (cm) x width (cm) x depth (cm).

8.   Ownership and Location History: Each work is provided with an ownership and location history (provenance) based on available records and interviews with the artist, along with information about its current location and owner. Auction history, if any, was also included in the ownership history. The ownership and location history lists the names of private or institutional owners, identified in documentary sources, together with the period of ownership. For privately owned works, if the name of a private collector is available, it is indicated inside parentheses–-ex. “ private (John Doe).” For the current location/ owner of a work, the name of a private collector or an institution is provided, unless there has been an express request to the contrary. When the current location of a work is not known, this is also indicated.

9.   Exhibition History: Exhibitions in which a work was shown are identified based on catalogues, the Korean Art Exhibition Data List, internet news and newspaper reports, and their titles are provided along with dates and venues. If a catalogue exists, the list of exhibits and the name of the organizer, if any, are also provided together with the title of the exhibition in Korean and English and other basic information such as the date and venue.

10.    References: References include catalogues containing the images of the artist’s work and other literature mentioning or discussing him or his work. There is a considerable number of news reports related to his solo exhibitions or groups shows or fairs in which he participated. All of them were compiled into a single, exhaustive list of references. By type, references range from exhibition catalogues and brochures to periodicals, books and interview transcripts. Research literature including critical essays was also included in the list of references. All reference materials were converted into digital files, either as a pdf or a jpg file. Captions were added to each reference, containing the title and the name of the publisher. References were classified into the following categories:

Book                       BO

Catalogue              CA

Search                    SE